SPRINGFIELD — A new coffee shop at Springfield High School is helping students with disabilities develop workforce readiness and life skills. Known as “The Cat Cafe,” the program provides students with real-life job experience by serving drinks to school staff.
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Staff can come down and make an order in person, or even place an order on their phone with an app.
“The next step would be outside of the classroom, but still in the school, still in that safe environment,” Kelli Lievherr, Transition Coordinator at Springfield City School District, said.
Lievherr’s job is making sure students are ready for whatever their plans are after high school. She found that students with disabilities needed a place to get real-life job experience.
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“I thought everybody loves coffee, so let’s go for that,” she added. “After students are here, then they take these skills (and) in their senior year, they get to do internships in the community.”
While recipe books show students how to make each drink they serve, the work at The Cat Cafe is about a lot more than just a cup of coffee.
“Working with people, work endurance, being able to do multi-step tasks. So this really puts all of those together,” Lievherr said.
She told News Center 7 that she’s already seeing a difference in each of the students just one month in.
‘They are shining. They are growing. You can see their personality is blooming, and it’s really showing people that they can do more than what others expected of them," she added.
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